


Beloved Husband, Dearest Friend

by teaberryblue



Series: Sparks & Stripes (Earth-3490) [4]
Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel 3490
Genre: 890fifth, Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Angst, Civil War, Civil War: What If, Death, Earth-3490, F/M, Fallen Son, Funeral, Genderswap, Loss, Marriage, Mourning, Moving In Together, Romance, Wedding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-01
Updated: 2015-02-01
Packaged: 2018-03-10 00:38:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3270233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teaberryblue/pseuds/teaberryblue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha Stark and Steve Rogers were able to circumvent a superhuman civil war in their reality, but even their alliance couldn't prevent the worst from happening.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beloved Husband, Dearest Friend

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much to my betas: rainproof, TheLiterator, Moonlit_Lampshade, Alephz, and kiyaar!
> 
> Written for the [890fifth](http://890fifth.tumblr.com) Week 9 theme: X Marks The Spot.
> 
> A couple people asked me why I was killing Steve in one of the "happy universes" where Civil War was avoided. The premise here is simply that, in thinking about 3490, I realized that Steve's assassination wouldn't necessarily have been deterred by sidestepping Civil War, since Red Skull's plan is its own independent plot and Steve's arrest simply set the scene for it. So I wondered about what it might have looked like in that universe. That's all you need to know.

The bed was too big, too cold. 

Natasha slept on her belly, her leg slung over the empty side of the mattress, over the place where Steve's warm solidity should have been. She caught at his pillow, clawing it, leaving deep imprints in the down.

Someone -- she wasn't sure who -- had changed the sheets, and they smelled like fabric softener. She tugged the top sheet up in a wad and inhaled deeply, but there was nothing, no trace of Steve's scent. 

She waited for the anguish to wreak its familiar havoc on her body; waited for tears to sting her eyes again, but nothing came, and she lay, still and shaking. 

She got up from bed, tried the dirty clothes hamper in the corner. Nothing. Empty. 

She screamed and threw the hamper across the room, where it bounced harmlessly off the wall, but left a dark gash in the paint job.

She sat, panting, in the corner, running her hands through the pearl-grey carpet, the carpet she'd gotten for Steve, the compromise carpet, when he'd moved in with her and they'd slowly adapted to sharing a space that had always been hers and hers alone, where he'd always been a guest, if a guest with unrestricted access. 

She had always known that he had hated all the sleek, ostentatious ultramodernity she favored, so while she'd kept the chrome computerized smart kitchen that he insisted on calling "the mothership," with all its lights and sensors and holographic imagery, she’d compromised by renovating their bedroom into something more homey, softer around the edges. 

It had been a surprise. Steve had come home one night to new curtains on the windows, a sausage pizza and half-gallon of orange juice on a picnic blanket on the floor, and not a scrap of anything on Natasha as she lounged on the bed. 

“I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be paying attention to, Sparks,” he’d said, gazing at her with a wondering expression, like he’d never seen her naked before. He had dropped his shield on the hook she’d hung expressly for it, climbed out of his outer layers.

She’d grinned and slid onto the floor. “The pizza gets cold. I don’t.” 

“Yes, you do,” Steve had answered, as he sat down across from her, stripped down to long underwear. “I can see your goosebumps.” 

“And you look like a lumberjack.” She had crawled over the blanket and climbed into his lap while he had started eating. “A big, blond lumberjack. You could be the model for the paper towel guy.” 

“You got rid of the triptych,” he’d observed, between bites of pizza. 

“I didn’t want you getting creeped out and running away from me,” she had said, as she’d slid her fingers beneath the hem of his shirt, toyed with the waistband of his pants. “I figured maybe having giant paintings of you above the bed was in poor taste.” 

He had laughed, and kissed her, his mouth tasting like cheese and garlic and salt, and he had wrapped an arm around her and cupped her belly with his hand. “They were Warhols,” he’d pointed out, before he had relinquished her and let her peel his shirt off and press him down against the picnic blanket, his head butting up along the edge of the pizza box. “I think it can be forgiven.” 

She had shaken her head and slid a hand down his pants while she licked his fingers clean. 

The next day, she had been greeted by a cheap Iron Woman poster stuck to the wall above the bed, with Scotch tape and a big red heart drawn on, in permanent ink, encircling her face. Steve had cut out a cartoon word balloon and positioned it so it was coming from her mouth, saying, “I have the greatest boyfriend alive.” 

She had replaced it with another word balloon that said, “fuck me senseless.”

It had escalated from there. The poster had stayed up for almost a month.

Now, it all felt suffocating, being in Steve's space, surrounded by Steve. Here, she wanted to cocoon herself away, and she couldn't, because his imprint was on everything. She couldn't find a place to look where he wasn't staring back.

She twisted her wedding band-- a new gesture she'd taken up, suddenly, on that horrible day, in the hospital waiting room while his life ebbed away. She'd barely noticed the slender ring of platinum on her finger before. 

Finally, she got up and ran her hands down her thighs, as if she were smoothing a skirt that wasn't there. She went to Steve's closet, opened the door. They both had identical, walk-in closets, but her closet was always so full that the overflow, naturally, found its way into his. This time, though, she turned to look through his things. 

There was his tux, still hung out in preparation for the fundraiser they'd never attended. She swallowed, hard, fingered the red silk pocket square that matched the red dress she'd been planning to wear. 

The tux was new, sleek, stylish, not at all like the charming, traditional one he’d worn to their wedding. She’d hemmed and hawed over his old-fashioned taste in formalwear, but in the end, the wedding had been completely Steve’s. 

They'd been married a year before they had gone public. They had done the deed in a courthouse on Long Island, as surreptitiously as possible. They’d worn jeans and tee shirts. Natasha's hair had been in a sloppy ponytail, and Steve had worn a baseball cap, and they'd said "I do," signed their papers, and hurried out of the place. They’d driven to Natasha's house in the Hamptons and cheerfully torn each other's clothes off. 

They'd spent a weekend naked and sweaty and eating delivery and experimenting with the strangeness of words like 'husband' and 'wife' and 'Mr.' and 'Mrs.' and calling each other ridiculous things like “Natasha Rogers” and “Steve Stark” and collapsing into laughter. 

They’d agonized over trying to decide how to tell their friends what they'd done. It wasn't that they’d thought anyone would be surprised so much as disappointed that they'd gone and done it on the sly. Of course, when they got back to the Mansion, it turned out there was a surprise party waiting for them, complete with shrimp cocktail and cupcakes, and someone had thought it was a hilarious joke to buy them a toaster and a food processor and the Sex Toy of the Month Club. 

Natasha's excuse for all the secrecy had been that she was concerned about their public image, worried that if the marriage didn't stick, it would hurt Steve's reputation -- not hers, never hers, her reputation was wrecked as it was, people still joked about her one-month farce of a marriage to Tiberius Stone -- but _his_ , certainly. 

She knew, of course, that the public wouldn't blame him. In reality, she'd been certain he'd realize the error of his ways, be overcome with some cold horror the minute he said "I do." She wanted to give him time to understand what a terrible mistake he'd made and flee, flee from her addiction and codependency and obsessiveness, from her terrible sleeping habits and even worse eating habits, from her wrecked body and iffy moral fiber.

But he hadn't. Months had gone by as they'd slid into each other's lives as harmoniously as they'd always worked together. They had been out to dinner one night when they'd realized that they'd been less than discreet-- they'd escaped the tabloids, sure, but the waiter at their favorite little Italian place had asked Steve if he was ever going to pop the question, and Steve, acting properly chastised, had gotten down on one knee immediately, as if the thought had never occurred to him, as if they hadn't been married a year already. Natasha had wound up cackling like a hyena and ordered chocolate cake and champagne for the whole restaurant, and a bottle of sparkling grape juice for the two of them.

“We could have rings,” Steve had said that night when they were lying in bed. “I could get you a ring; remember when you told me I had to get you a ring?” 

“I was being a dick. I don’t need a ring,” Natasha had assured him. “I work with my hands so much; it would get lost, or stuck in something. There’s no reason to--”

“I want a ring,” Steve had answered, and he’d taken her hand, curled her fingers around his ring finger. “I want something with me when you’re not there. We spend too much time apart.” 

And then he’d waxed poetic, in that way people do just before they drift off to sleep, about getting married in a church, seeing Natasha in a gown with a veil and a bouquet, and when they woke up to a world where their engagement was rumored on every gossip site, in every tabloid they could find, she had decided it was his reward for all the cumulative years of standing beside her even at the worst of times. He'd already kept his vows, ironclad, without ever making them.

She put her hands up to the suit jacket, like she was pressing her hands to his chest, bit her lip, swayed as if they were dancing.

She unbuttoned the jacket, slid inside it, where it dangled on the hanger, rested her cheek against the satin lining. 

"Steve," she murmured, and then again. "Steve, Steve," his name like a spell, like an incantation.

The telephone line buzzed in her ear. 

She sank to the floor, in the closet, dug her toes into the carpet, leaned her head against a pile of Steve’s sweaters before the line buzzed again. “Answer,” she instructed the phone. 

“Stark,” she said. Her voice sounded so hollow, so distant, as if it were coming from another body. 

“Tash?” 

Natasha straightened up, moving in an instant from feeling empty and aimless, lost in memories, to being painfully, keenly in the present. 

"Hey, Sharon," she said, slowly measuring the words.

She heard a sigh at the other end of the line. "I just...wanted to report in. The boys are still working on Rumlow, but they've got nothing."

Natasha winced. "You calling to check on me, Thirteen?"

"You want someone to check on you, Director?" Sharon shot back.

"I'm sitting on the floor of his closet trying to find something that still smells like him," Natasha replied. 

She heard Sharon's breath hitch.

"Sorry," Natasha said. "Sorry, I know you're the last person I should be--"

"Don't think that way," Sharon answered. Her voice soft, reassuring. "You'd be there for me if our roles were reversed."

"You give me a lot of credit," said Natasha.

Sharon clucked. "You could have blamed me. I was right there; I should have been able to protect him. And instead, you defended me."

"Shary," Natasha said softly, using Steve's old nickname for the other woman. "You didn't pull the trigger."

Sharon was quiet for a long moment, long enough that Natasha wondered if the call had been dropped.

"Sometimes it feels like I did," Sharon said in a strangled tone. 

"You still seeing that shrink?" Natasha asked.

"Yeah," Sharon answered. "You want an appointment?"

"No," Natasha said. "The Director shouldn't be going to the same shrink as all her employees. Smacks of a conflict-of-interest. Anyway, every psychiatrist I've ever been to tries to give me a prescription."

"It might help, Tash," Sharon said. "Antidepressants aren't the same as--"

“They’re still addictive,” Natasha answered. 

“Yeah,” said Sharon. “Okay. I…” There was a breath on the other end of the line. “I’ll call you tomorrow. You need anything?” 

Natasha unfolded one of Steve’s sweaters-- blue, shetland wool. Too scratchy, but she lay it across her lap, fingering the collar. 

“No,” she said. “Not right now. I’m gonna turn in.” 

She didn’t say goodbye, not exactly, just disconnected the call and tugged Steve’s sweater on. It swam on her: sleeves falling well below her fingertips, torso the shape of a box, coming down below her hips. 

She sat in the closet, curled on the floor, for so long that time began to fade, that she lost all ability to mark the minutes. 

“You told Sharon you were going to bed.” 

The voice was too near, and Natasha was up like a shot, her undersuit sliding over her skin protectively, before she turned to see a familiar face and hear a soft laugh.

“Hey, Red,” she said, the armor fading as quickly as it had manifested.

“Hello, my dear bucket o’ bolts,” said the other woman. 

“What are you doing here?” Natasha asked. She slumped into the other Natasha’s open arms. 

“Came to tuck you in.” Red answered. 

Whether it was because of her hair or her affiliation with Russia, Natasha had never sussed out, but after Clint had demanded an agenda item to clear up the nickname confusion over having two Natashas on the team, Red had somehow wound up being Red, and Natasha had gotten to keep her name, given her seniority status.

“Do I get hot milk, too?” Natasha asked as Red walked her back to bed. She watched the other woman carefully, noticing the swelling at her temple, the way she stepped gingerly, the carefully-schooled expression on her face. “How’d the transfer go? His shield’s all safe and cozy? ” 

Red sat down on the edge of the bed, looking away, kneading at the mattress with her fingers. “I don’t know how to tell you this,” she said, slowly, deliberately. “It’s about Lishka.”

“Barnes?” Natasha asked, her eyes flicking up. “Did you hear from her?” 

Red pursed her lips and touched the bruise on her temple. “It’s not what you want to hear.” 

****

The makeup artist had done her best, but Natasha had stopped her short of smoothing the dark circles beneath her eyes, the hollows of her cheekbones. 

"I'm a grieving widow," she'd said, adamantly. "Let me look it."

She was fitted out in a black-on-black suit, a gold pin in the shape of the SHIELD logo stabbed through her lapel. Taupe nylons, black heels, lipstick like she'd been kicked in the mouth. Hair pinned back severely, drawing attention to her too-thin face.

She pinned on a pillbox hat with a black veil.

That morning, she had sent a single, one word message to the people she needed there most: Red, Carol, Rhodey, Reed and Sue, Logan, Luke and Jessica, the other Jessica, Matt Murdock, Peter Parker, Danny Rand, Janet Van Dyne.

_Assemble._

They were all there now; she could see them standing shoulder to shoulder across the back of the room if she tilted her head just so and peered past the curtains. Some of them, the ones who'd come public, were in street clothes; others still wore their masks.

She hoped the ones who had need to could forgive her, because she wasn’t sure she could forgive herself.

"You're not Natasha Stark," Red said, as she prepped her, given her her notecards. "You're not Iron Man--"

"Woman. It’s Iron _Woman_ now,"

"Whatever," Red said, with a cheerfully dismissive wave of her hand. "You are not an Iron Person of Any Gender. You're not the Director of SHIELD. You're Captain America's widow. Channel that. Channel what you had at the funeral."

Natasha gave Red a pained look. "Channel a nervous breakdown and a single-sentence eulogy?"

Red ignored her question. She tugged Natasha's veil down to obscure her eyes. "Flip it up at the right moment," she advised. "You’ll know when I mean."

Natasha looked down at her cards. 

_We have all suffered extraordinary loss,_ said the one she flipped to.

"I can't do this," she said. "Red, I can't do this without him."

"You can," said Red. "Stop that; you're the most capable woman I know."

"I don't--" Natasha shook her head. "Only because he was there to pick me up, to keep me in check, to-- that's how we functioned; we balanced each other."

She shuffled the cards again. _For the preservation of our future, for the safety and protection of our loved ones._

He eyes were beginning to sting; she was grateful for the veil, even if she knew that Red, of all people, could tell from the tone of her voice, from the careful inflection and the higher pitch, that something was wrong.

Red shook her head. "You were Iron Man long before he came into your life. Don't you think I, of all people, would know?"

"I'm scared," Natasha said, softly. "That without him, I'm going to overreach. That I'm going to put up walls he would have torn down."

"You've got other people," Red pointed out. 

Natasha swallowed, hard, not looking up again at those very same people, knowing they were waiting to see how she responded, waiting to decide whether to give her a second chance at leadership. "Any sign of you-know-who?" Natasha asked.

"Lishka?" Red shook her head. "Sam and I have an idea. We're gonna look into it."

"Don't make it about the shield," Natasha said. "We don't need to know about the shield."

"Tash," said Red. "Tash, believe me. I can handle that little girl better than an army. Promise."

"I wanted her here," Natasha said, her voice tight. "She would have wanted to be here. And at the burial."

"She was at the burial," Red answered. 

"Wha-- oh," said Natasha. "Of course she was; I assumed as much, even if she didn't show herself. I meant the other burial."

Red tucked a loose strand of hair behind Natasha's ear. "The real one."

Natasha nodded. "Yeah. That one."

Behind her eyes, she saw the glass casket-- and Steve with it, sinking, slowly, the image fading away from her as it slid deeper into the Arctic. He was lying serenely, his body wasted to nothing, gaping holes in his torso where the life had been violently snatched from him. 

She had given him everything she could: there was an oxygen generator, nutrient IV, alarm button that would signal her immediately if it were activated. There was an MP3 player, an instruction manual to open the coffin from the inside, a small package of non-perishable food, a letter from her, a letter explaining what had happened and where he was, professing her love and sealed with a messy lipstick stain.

The letter was too long, too meandering. It went on tangents about King Arthur and waxed poetic about the life she thought they'd have. It didn't have a proper closing; she had needed to tear herself away from the page, tell herself she'd written enough. 

And she heard the same far-off, well-meaning voice in her head, telling her to accept it, but she knew she wouldn't. Never. Here she stood, in a body that should have stopped pumping blood years ago, and _he_ was dead. They’d had conversations, conversations Steve had told her they didn't need to have, but she had insisted upon, the serious, sobering conversations about what Steve would do when she died.

"It's still a long way off," Steve would always say, and he'd tangle his fingers in her hair and kiss her, and she'd squirm away and tell him that it was sooner than either of them were prepared for.

Then she would go to her lab, check all her vitals, pull a blood sample and test it for everything she could think of.

They had never had a conversation about what would happen when Steve died first. It wasn't possible; it couldn't happen.

Yet here she was.

The day before he died, they had sat together on their bed, facing each other, hands tangled together. 

They had been locked in their bedroom for four days, stopping for nothing but meals and a few stolen hours of sleep. The bed, the floor, the walls were covered with scrawled notes, printouts, charts; there were holographic models projected over every spare cubic inch of space. They had fought, shouted, hurled insults, cried...and then, in the middle of it all, Natasha had screamed at Steve that if he knew so damn much better than everyone else, he could be in charge of the stupid fucking thing. 

"Just march right out there!" she'd yelled. "Just-- collect all the names yourself in your stupid perfect nineteen forties handwriting and hide them under your mattress, if you're so much more trustworthy than everyone else!" 

They’d both gone silent and stared at each other, the epiphany a mix of clarity and horror. 

Natasha had been the first one to speak. “Please, Steve?” she asked. “This is how we do it. This is how we make things better.” 

They’d scrapped all their notes and charts and started over, and it took them eight hours to come up with their final proposal. They’d proofread it, tidied up the documents, and lay down in each other’s arms and cried. Or, more accurately, Natasha had cried while Steve tried to look stoic and she kissed away his tears before they spilled over too violently. 

Then, and only then, they slept. When they woke up, they looked their documents over again, tentatively, half-worried that it had only seemed like a workable plan at the height of their fear. 

"It should be me," Steve had said. He had seemed so firm, so certain. It surprised her, how dead set he was on it, then. “To present it.” 

"You don't have to," Natasha had said. "I can do it. All those people, who feel like I betrayed them by-- by letting the fucking government get away with this-- they deserve to hear me take it back.” 

"And you will," Steve had assured her, squeezing her hand. "But if people see you--"

Natasha had taken a deep breath. "You don't think they'll trust me," she said. "You think it'll jeopardize public opinion."

"Speaking frankly?" Steve had said.

“When do you ever _not_ speak frankly, Stripes?”

He’d made a face. An adorable, eye-rolling, tongue-sticking-out face, and Natasha had had no idea that it would be the last time she’d see him do that. "Well, yeah, that's exactly what they think. You weren't on their side until your own personal life was--"

"Until Hill ordered an assault on my husband," Natasha had replied. She looked up at him, wrinkled her nose. "I know, Stripes, okay? I remember. I'm the one they appointed to untangle that clusterfuck."

"Do they know you're dismantling the Sentinels?" Steve had asked.

"Better to ask forgiveness than permission," Natasha had said sweetly. 

He had cupped her chin, drew her in for a kiss. "You're as perfect as the day I met you, Sparks."

"The day you met me, you thought I was a man."

He had kissed her again. "A man I would have made an exception for."

She had kicked at him, gently, her socked foot butting up against his shin. “I’d pay to see that.” 

“You and half the internet,” Steve had retorted. 

Natasha had jutted her chin out. “Three quarters. You sure you want to do this? You-- without me?”

“Not-- I’ll bring you up after I start,” Steve had explained. “If I put my full weight behind it, they’ll trust it. Everyone knows I opposed the original bill, and I opposed your compromise.”

Natasha had shrugged. “It was a shitty compromise.” 

“Yes, it was, but it was made with the best intentions,” Steve had replied. “This is going to work. I’ll go first, you go second. We stick together from then on.” 

But neither of them had gone anywhere and they hadn’t ever come back together. Natasha had already been seated when she heard the commotion at the doors. From there, everything had passed before her like a zoetrope, images flickering, half-still and half in motion. There had been Sharon, in shock, covered in blood, the chaos of the hospital, Steve’s blood on her blouse, telling him she loved him, over and over, her voice pitched high and frantic. Hours, sitting and waiting, knowing that he wouldn’t come back from this, knowing that the only reason she was still waiting was because no one wanted to be the surgeon who gave up on Captain America. 

"It's time," said Red. "Ready?"

Carol and Rhodey, both, as if on cue-- and Natasha was sure Red had given them some kind of silent signal-- flanked her, both in full dress uniform, and they both hooked pinkies with her, one on either side.

"No," Natasha answered. "But I don't have a choice, do I?"

Red smiled sadly, her teeth tugging at her lower lip. "Remember what you're doing this for."

Natasha steeled herself. "Not what. Who."

And she stepped onto the stage, out to the podium, into the glaring flashbulbs of the press.

She glanced at her first card, the one that said _No one’s private life should ever be made public by anyone’s choice but their own._

She mouthed the words; her tongue felt dry, clumsy. 

“Goddammit, Stripes,” she murmured to herself. “You martyred yourself for this; it better stick.” 

She took a breath. She watched the audience quiet, settle into place, saw their eyes all fix on her, watched as even the photographers put their cameras down, as if the entire room held their breath at once. She flipped up the veil. 

The rain poured on the day of his funeral, cold and piercing like knives, but still, the cemetery was packed with crowds, the sea of faces peering out from behind dark coats and darker umbrellas stretching on so far that Natasha couldn’t recognize many of them-- she likely didn’t even know them. When the last word was said, and the last handful of dirt was spilled over the coffin, the last flower laid down, she watched them filter away in long lines, like ants leaving an anthill, but she stayed in place, staring at the hole in the ground until everyone else was gone. Rhodey had offered to stay with her, so had Jan, but she had shrugged them off-- shrugged them off after she borrowed Rhodey’s coat and begged a stick of gum off Jan. 

The ground in front of his fake grave was all upturned, all churning mud in the rain; there was a huge, gaudy statue that didn’t look enough like Steve; it looked like some wrestler in a costume, holding a stone shield aloft, waving a stone flag. The actual stone wasn’t yet in place (she’d gotten something plain, understated, that didn’t trumpet accolades, but merely said “Beloved Husband, Dearest Friend,” because she knew that was what Steve would have asked for, and anyway, Washington was taking care of the pomp.)

She had abandoned her umbrella, let the rain soak through her black crepe dress, saturate her hair till it was as limp and lifeless as she felt.

She hadn’t been able look at the statue. It had the wrong face, the wrong nose, the wrong hands, dull, flat, unsmiling stone eyes. 

“I’m sorry,” she had said to the ground, kicking at the dirt with her fourteen-hundred-dollar heel. “I fucked up. I should have-- it should have been me.”

She had known the stranger was watching her before he called attention to her; she could feel eyes on her. When she looked up, she saw two spots of light glowing from beneath a wide-brimmed hat, from behind a high collar.

“Come to pay your respects?” she had asked. 

“In a manner of speaking. Come to dwell on your failures?” the man had replied.

Natasha had spun on her heel, winced as she felt her hackles raise in spite of herself. “This wasn’t _my_ failure,” she had snapped.

The man had made a sound that Natasha though might have been a laugh. “I’ve heard that quite a lot, lately,” he had said. “And I’ve said, quite a lot, that I know part of you knows that to be true.” 

Natasha had bitten her lip. “I should have protected him. I should have...I should have known this would happen, that someone would-- I should have been able to see all the eventualities.” 

Something about the stranger had twitched, and he’d tilted his head toward her. “That...is something I haven’t heard before.” 

Natasha had let out a choked sob, and she had turned back away from him. “He should be here right now. He _could_ be, if only I--”

Pictures had begun to flash before her, bright and searing and painful to watch. Worlds upon worlds, speeding by: worlds where they’d worked out their differences, worlds where they hadn’t. Worlds where their proposals had succeeded, where they’d come up with a solution to Registration, worlds where the bill had become more draconian, more stifling. Worlds where they’d actually plunged the entire world into a superhuman war, worlds where superhumans were hunted and killed in the streets. Worlds where she and Steve weren’t married, worlds where they weren't lovers, worlds where, by the end of things, they weren’t even friends. Worlds where she had been a _man_ of all things, and she had bitten back a pained laugh, as Steve’s words, as ‘an exception,’ echoed in her head.

“I am going to show you something,” the stranger had said. “Something I will _only_ show you, because you deserve to see it, more than all the others.” 

And then there was death. She had watched Steve die, over and over, a hundred different ways, brutal and painful and maddening. Sometimes, she was near him, holding him, holding his hand. Other times, she was barred from the room, barred from the hospital, somewhere far away getting the news by telephone, by messenger. 

She whimpered, as the weight of all that death became too much to bear. “Are there-- what happens when he lives? He _must_ live some of the time.” 

The images changed. Now, Natasha was watching her own death.

She saw herself shot down like he had been, hunted like a fugitive, poisoned by Extremis, death upon death upon awful death, and worse than seeing Steve’s death repeated was seeing him watch her die, watching him crumple, watching him try to hold himself together and not being there to comfort him. 

“Stop,” she had said, weakly. “I can’t-- I don’t want to see anymore.” 

And the pictures had faded. 

“Why are you showing me this?” she had asked. “Why are you-- don’t you understand this is _torment_? Show me-- show me one where he _lives_ , dammit. Show me one where he’s happy. Where we succeed.” 

“But there aren’t any,” the stranger had said. “Certainly, in some worlds you stop the war. In some worlds, you make things better for your kind. In other worlds, you fail completely. I let-- some of the others I visited, I let them see the solution, the success, because it was what they needed. I didn’t show them what happened next. But you...you need to know this. One of you dies. No matter how well you do, one of you always dies.” 

She had shaken her head, gnashed her teeth, rainwater falling into her mouth, cold and bitter. “No,” she had said. “I could have done better. I fell short.” 

The stranger had been quiet, too quiet, for too long until Natasha had wrapped her arms around herself, shivering and suddenly all too aware of the cold. “You did the best you could,” he had said. “The best out of any of them.”

Natasha had jabbed her heel into the mud, like she was stabbing at flesh. “Then the best isn’t good enough.” She had turned back, back toward the stranger, but he had vanished, off somewhere into the shadows and the pouring rain, and Natasha had found herself on her own again. 

“I’ll try harder.”


End file.
